DICKINSON AN ANGRY YOUNG MAIDEN

It’s a good thing there were no deejays hanging out at the pool at that ritzy Sunset Strip hotel that afternoon when Bruce Dickinson was verbally ripping them to shreds. If they had heard what Iron Maiden’s lead singer was saying about them, they might have wrapped his shoulder-length hair around his neck and used it as a noose.

Unshaven, wearing only shorts, his long hair flapping in the breeze, Dickinson, 28, looked like a beach bum who had accidentally wandered into that luxurious setting. Though the small, cocky Englishman appeared relaxed, judging from his comments, his blood must have been boiling.

“It’s easy to be a deejay,” he said in a tone dripping with venom. “You don’t have to be a clever guy. A monkey could learn to operate those buttons. You just play what your PD (program director) tells you to play and sound enthusiastic about everything.”

Dickinson’s sarcasm was picking up steam as he went along. The creativity of deejays was his next target.

“It used to be a creative job,” he said. “But anybody can do the job now. All the talented people in radio are gone. We’re left with a bunch of mental zeros operating the airwaves.”

Dickinson was quite mellow until the mention of radio set him fuming. His problem with radio is that very few stations play Iron Maiden. But this band, playing Monday through Wednesday at the Long Beach Arena, learned a long time ago to rely on touring to build an audience. It has managed to do very well without much help from radio.

Still, album sales are picking up. The band’s latest album, “Somewhere in Time”--its seventh for Capitol since 1980--is its biggest seller yet. “But we’re really small potatoes when it comes to album sales,” Dickinson admitted. “Selling 1 million copies is a big thing for us.”

For larger album sales, though, extensive radio airplay is essential. That, of course, means making concessions to radio. You can guess what what response that suggestion elicited.

“Are you kidding?,” he asked in disbelief, as if I had just suggested that he cut his hair off. “We won’t change. We could do shorter songs or songs with a more pop feel or songs that aren’t really the hardest rock. Then we might get airplay and have a shot at a hit single. But we’d never make changes like that to get played on the radio. I’d jump off a bridge first.”

Early in the interview, Dickinson tried to laugh off the band’s conflicts with radio. “Radio and metal just don’t seem to mix,” he said. “Right now Bon Jovi are the darlings of radio (that band’s “Slippery When Wet” has been the No. 1 pop album for weeks). It’s a good album but that’s not really the hard-core heavy metal. It’s just pop enough to get airplay. But radio thinks of us as hard-core heavy metal. Radio hates us and our music, which they think is noise. They would like to see us fall off the face of the earth. I think it’s funny.”

But he wasn’t laughing. You could see the rage building as he talked further about radio. He never exploded--he just seethed.

Maybe he had heard that deejay taking vicious potshots at heavy metal on the radio a few hours earlier, snickering that most of it was as loud as a jackhammer but considerably less melodic. The deejay didn’t stop there. He lumped Iron Maiden in with some inferior metal bands and needled the lead singers, contending that a hyena with throat cancer would sound better than all of them.

That deejay was overly nasty but he made a good point about heavy metal and radio. The earsplitting, monotonous metal--most of it falls into that category--really doesn’t sound good on radio. It tends to drive listeners away. That’s why most metal is heard on stations largely devoted to that kind of music--and there aren’t many of those stations.

Even Dickinson admitted that too much metal on radio drives him crazy: “I can’t listen to hours of continuous heavy metal. It’s OK for a while, but then it causes your brain to explode. I want to listen to something else after a while.”

This band has gone through many personnel changes since it started accumulating a following in the late ‘70s in clubs in London’s East End. Only survivors from those early days are guitarist Dave Murray and bassist Steve Harris. Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith joined in the early ‘80s. The final replacement was drummer Nicko McBrain, a member since 1983.

The addition of Dickinson was probably most significant move the band has made in the ‘80s. Metalmaniacs will tell you that Dickinson is a great singer--sort of the Frank Sinatra of metal. To those not tuned into heavy metal, his singing may sound like random yelling. But his voice can be melodious and his phrasing is often quite inventive.

Iron Maiden is a heavy-metal band without too much glitz and burdened with no Satanism. Nor are these guys what you’d call kinky or nasty.

“We don’t beat up women on stage or tie people up or do perverted sex things or advocate violence,” Dickinson noted. “We’re not saints but we’re not outlaws either.”

This band could be much bigger than it is. It’s huge in heavy metal but not that well known among the pop masses. The band members--particularly Dickinson--have the talent go beyond metal. With a little fine-tuning, this could be the next Bon Jovi.

The key, though, is for Iron Maiden to patch up its deteriorating relationship with radio and make a musical concession or two to get air play.

Will that ever happen?

Dickinson said it might--on a cold day in hell.